Editorial | Make a clear PATH

People, as a rule, do not choose to be poor. Those who are generally take no pleasure in having to use safety nets provided by governments to help them with a leg-up. They do so because they must.

But beyond any altruism or ideological disposition that may be behind social welfare, governments have good reasons for such policies. Well-designed and efficiently managed welfare programmes are, by and large, good for societies. They help with social stability by preventing people who have fallen on hard times from being totally lost in the cracks. The cushion is also important as people attempt to transition to better circumstances. Appropriate welfare policies also tend to make good economics. The consumption they allow also helps to drive economic activity, thereby contributing to job creation and growth.

It is for the foregoing, and more, that this newspaper finds common ground with those members of Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC), who were at once pained and outraged at the report that J$271 million earmarked for beneficiaries of the Programme of Advancement Through Health and Education (PATH) was, during the last fiscal year, written back to the Consolidated Fund, the Government’s primary account. The money was uncollected.

PATH is a conditional cash-transfer scheme, under which poor families get financial support. To qualify, however, they must not only be at the programme’s poverty threshold, but ensure that younger children follow the stipulated public health regimen and older ones maintain a minimum school attendance record.

Cash Grants

The website of the Ministry of Labour and Social Security says it provides cash grants to approximately 350,000 PATH beneficiaries. And according to the administration’s Budget for the fiscal year that ends in March, J$8.5 billion was earmarked for the programme in 2020-2021. That, apparently, is separate from an allocation of J$5.5 billion in the education ministry’s budget for a school-feeding programme for students covered by PATH.

But even with these expenditures, no one would claim that PATH is a lavish or plenteous scheme. Critics often claim that only people with real needs would subject themselves to its intrusive criteria for registration. Which is what makes the write-back to the Government’s Consolidated Fund of J$271 million in uncollected PATH payments – flagged by the Government’s auditor general in her latest annual report – so stark and off-putting. Some of this cash had languished in accounts in private banks since 2017. Nearly 2,000 payees were affected.

Shortage of Social Workers

According to the ministry’s permanent secretary, Colette Roberts Risden, who has faced criticism from PAC members for her financial oversight of the ministry, PATH rules require that if after two disbursements, benefits are not collected, payments are halted until an investigation is completed. She conceded, however, that there was a lapse in these reverifications, which she blamed, in part, on a shortage of social workers.

“... Right now, we have one social worker to 1,000 persons,” she said. “It’s the same social workers out there during COVID, during flooding, a fire, hurricane; the same social workers … have to go out there and do investigations.”

While we appreciate Mrs Roberts Risden’s complaints about the insufficiency of field staff, it is not clear what representation she made to address the problem, or if alternative arrangements were considered to complete the tasks or meet the same ends. In any event, based on the auditor general’s reports, it is not only the PATH monies with which the Ministry of Labour and Social Security seems, in recent times, to have been narcoleptic.

PATH, though, is especially poignant. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, many Jamaicans lived on the margins. Now, the poverty rate of 12.6 per cent in 2018 is likely to have grown sharply. So, having money meant for poor people languishing in accounts in private banks, accruing no interest, while people’s real needs remained unmet, is not an easy pill to swallow.

The fundamentals of PATH, as is usually the case with direct transfer schemes, remain sound. But we agree with Mrs Roberts Risden that after nearly two decades, it is perhaps in need of review – not just to reverify beneficiaries, but to take a hard look at the efficiency of its bureaucratic management. There should also be tweaks to make the programme more accessible to the poor. And, perhaps, more substantive.